I post a lot of information on this blog about psychological studies relating to deceitfulness and lying. I always wondered how valid the findings were. Doesn't a scientist have an extreme bias to believe that his hypothesis is right? Is the sample size representative of the population as a whole? This article delves into answering those questions. Enjoy.
- Nadine
Via The Atlantic (T/Y World of Psychology).
This array suggested a bigger, underlying dysfunction, and Ioannidis thought he knew what it was. “The studies were biased,” he says. “Sometimes they were overtly biased. Sometimes it was difficult to see the bias, but it was there.” Researchers headed into their studies wanting certain results—and, lo and behold, they were getting them. We think of the scientific process as being objective, rigorous, and even ruthless in separating out what is true from what we merely wish to be true, but in fact it’s easy to manipulate results, even unintentionally or unconsciously. “At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” says Ioannidis. “There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.”
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